“Things aren’t go­ing as ex­pec­ted”

Su­ri­na­me will no lon­ger get any mo­ney from the In­ter­na­ti­o­nal Mo­ne­ta­ry Fund (IMF) for the ti­me being. Se­ve­r­al months ago the IMF agreed to lend Su­ri­na­me $478 mil­li­on but Su­ri­na­me has on­ly re­cei­ved $ 81 mil­li­on so far. Re­ports in­di­ca­te that Su­ri­na­me has not stuck to the pro­po­sals and pro­grams which it had pre­sen­ted to the IMF as part of its Sta­bi­li­za­ti­on and Re­co­ve­ry Plan 2016-2018. This is why fur­ther pay­ments from the IMF ha­ve been fro­zen. Un­til fur­ther no­ti­ce. “All the do­cu­men­ta­ti­on of the plan is on­li­ne. When one looks at the sche­me, one can see that things aren’t go­ing as ex­pec­ted. When the au­tho­ri­ties ta­ke firm ac­ti­ons that are con­sis­tent with the ob­jec­ti­ves in their pro­gram, we will eva­lu­a­te things from that point on,” said Da­niel Leigh, head of the IMF mis­si­on that has held the re­gu­lar Ar­ti­cle IV con­sulta­ti­on rounds with the Su­ri­na­me­se au­tho­ri­ties for the past two weeks. “We sei­zed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ta­ke a step back and to re­view the long term as­pects and not to get in­to the de­tails of the plan,” said Leigh. He could not in­di­ca­te when the se­cond por­ti­on of the mo­ney as part of the stand-by agree­ment will be trans­fer­red. He ex­plai­ned that this de­pends on the govern­ment. “As soon as the govern­ment sticks to the terms of its own ho­me grown pro­gram, the IMF will be wil­ling again to dis­cuss ma­king the funds avai­la­ble. They must achie­ve their ob­jec­ti­ves. When they ha­ve ma­de mo­re pro­gress, we can eva­lu­a­te things to­gether.”